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Tessa Virtue, Scott Moir win silver at Grand Prix Final

By Associated Press

Sat., Dec. 7, 2013

Tessa Virtue of London, Ont., and Scott Moir of Ilderton, Ont., were edged out by Americans Meryl Davis and Charlie White for top spot in record performances Saturday in ice dancing at the ISU Grand Prix Final.

Davis and White, the current world champions, earned 191.35 points while Virtue and Moir, the Olympic champs, finished at 190.00. They are the two highest scores ever in the event. Nathalie Pechalat and Fabian Bourzat of France were third at 169.11.

“We had a great skate,” said Moir. “We’ve been training so well and working so hard all season. We did our technical elements really well at this event. We’ll need to come out with more speed and more emotion heading into the Games and hopefully that can put us on top.”

Virtue agreed: “We’re right on track. Our approaches are bang on. It’s a process, we still have two more months to train before the Games and we need to trust that process that it will get us where we need to go.”

Kaitlyn Weaver and Andrew Poje of Waterloo, Ont., dropped from fourth to fifth overall after the free dance.

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“We know we can grow in both programs,” said Weaver. “We’re going to be fast at work at home and make sure everything is bigger and better and stronger for the Games.”

In pairs, Aliona Savchenko and Robin Szolkowy of Germany won the gold medal with Tatiana Volosozhar and Maxim Trankov of Russia second and Qing Pang and Jian Tong of China in third.

Meagan Duhamel of Lively, Ont., and Eric Radford of Balmertown, Ont., were fifth. Kirsten Moore-Towers of St. Catharines, Ont., and Dylan Moscovitch of Toronto sixth. Both Canadian pairs had trouble with their side-by-side jumps and spins.

“We needed to apply that same kind of feeling and attack we had in the short program yesterday (Friday),” said Radford, who set a personal score with Duhamel in Friday’s performance. “It’s never easy to start off the program with a major mistake.”

“We’ll take our performances here and work on improving ourselves at home,” said Moore-Towers. “Despite the mistakes we kept fighting and didn’t let things go.”

Also, Japanese skater Mao Asada won the Grand Prix Final despite failing to land two triple axels early in her free program.

Asada was first after the short program and overcame a fall on her opening triple axel and an under-rotation of the triple axel on her second combination jump to finish with 204.02 points.

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Julia Lipnitskaia of Russia was second with 192.07 points followed by Ashley Wagner of the United States with 187.61.

“It was my first time to do two triple axels in the long program,” Asada said. “I felt I needed to challenge myself so that’s why I had two triple axels.”

Asada’s failure to complete the jump could jeopardize her chances of beating rival Kim Yu-na of South Korea at the Sochi Olympics. She also under-rotated a pair of double loops in Saturday’s routine.

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